We hear this in every election and, superficially, it seems logical: Candidate A is bad, but Candidate B is worse. Most of the people who support the third-party candidate, Candidate X, would prefer A over B, so their votes for X take votes away from A. If enough people do this, they will split the vote opposed to B, ensuring B's victory. Simple.

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore and George W. Bush are the accepted candidates, bouncing up and down in the polls, making powerful and moving speeches in support of children and doing other typical politician things. Harry Browne is the Libertarian candidate, fairly well known on talk radio and on the Internet, while fighting an uphill battle to get noticed by the mainstream media. Conventional wisdom, when it notices Browne at all, assumes that he will take votes away from Bush, assuring Gore's victory. People who make this argument generally consider Gore to be worse than Bush, so it's clear that voters who support Browne are callous traitors who would give us four years of Al Gore when it is within their power to save us from this fate. If Gore is elected, it's all their fault and they've willfully sold the country down the river, the selfish bastards.

Let's pick apart this elaborate rationalization (for that's what it is) one point at a time:

• It assumes that all of Browne's votes come from Bush.
• It assumes that Bush has first claim on these votes.
• It assumes the outcome of the election.
• It assumes away any counterbalancing effects of votes for other candidates.
• It assumes that a vote would make a difference for Bush, but not for Browne.
• It assumes that Browne's supporters all vote in a block.
• It assumes that a vote is valuable only if cast for a winner.
• It assumes that Bush cares what you think.
• It assumes that Gore voters can't change their minds and are not responsible for their actions.
• It applies just as well in reverse.
• It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 
 

It assumes that all of Browne's votes come from Bush. .  Why do we assume this? Did all of Ross Perot's votes in 1992 come from George Bush? It's commonly thought that they did. However, voter participation in 1992 went up by about ten million. It seems unlikely that all these people, who had not bothered to vote for Bush in 1988, now found him so inspiring that they decided to vote for his re-election. It seems more likely that almost all them went to Perot, meaning that about half of Perot's support came from new voters, and was not pulled from either major candidate. Perot probably did receive some votes that would otherwise have gone to Bush, but it's hard to imagine that Bush would have received 57% of the popular vote in the absence of Perot's candidacy. (In 1996, voter participation went down by ten million, and Perot received ten million fewer votes.)  In general, the more support a candidate has, the less likely it is that all his support is drawn from a single source. A candidate with very little support may have a narrowly defined constituency, but a candidate with very little support is less likely to make an impact anyway.  Libertarians, in particular, tend to draw support from both left and right. This promises to be especially true this year as both major-party candidates are more pathetic than scary, and are thus unlikely to inspire strong reactions, either positive or negative.  In addition, nearly half of the voting-age population doesn't vote. That's a huge constituency -- far bigger than all the third-party voters combined -- available for anyone who can win their support, without taking a single vote away from any other candidate.

It assumes that Bush has first claim on these votes. .  What makes Bush the legitimate candidate, while Browne is a mere pretender? Only the assumption that he is, which is used to prove that very point. It's hard to imagine a purer example of question-begging, not to mention a more elitist and condescending viewpoint.  A candidate can't "take votes away" from another candidate. The votes don't belong to the candidates; they belong to the voters.

It assumes the outcome of the election. .  The obvious assumption is that Browne would carry the margin of victory, otherwise none of this would be worth worrying about. But this assumes that Bush would otherwise win, ignoring two other possibilities: That Bush would win anyway. That Bush would lose anyway. These are not outrageous scenarios, particularly if Browne draws support not only from Bush, but also from Gore, Nader, Buchanan, and people who would otherwise not vote. It's therefore quite possibile (and with a Libertarian, quite probable) that Browne could carry the margin of victory, yet not swing the election.  It's also possible for Browne to receive less than the margin of victory, making it impossible for him to swing the election, no matter where his votes come from.

It assumes away any counterbalancing effects of votes for other candidates. .  There are several other presidential candidates in the 2000 election: Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, John Hagelin, and a handful of others. Discussions of Browne's effect on the race tend to be based on the assumption of a three-way race, but that's an oversimplified view. Any votes Browne pulls from Bush will be counteracted, with respect to the two major candidates, by the votes that Nader pulls from Gore. Conversely, any votes that Browne pulls from Gore are balanced by the votes that Buchanan pulls from Bush. Votes that Browne pulls from potential non-voters, of course, have no effect on Gore's or Bush's totals.

It assumes that your vote would make a difference for Bush, but not for Browne. .  This one is actually fairly subtle. Your vote won't help Browne win because it's an individual vote, and one vote won't put Browne over the top. Very likely true. Then why would this pitiful little vote be so valuable to Candidate Bush? Because when we talk about Bush, the discussion shifts to the presumed effect of all Browne's votes in aggregate. Your vote has been magically transformed! No longer a single voter, you now control the hearts and minds (and voting levers) of Browne supporters everywhere! It's a heady feeling, and it might be a powerful argument if it made any sense. Unfortunately, though, your vote remains one vote, whether you vote for Bush, Browne, or anyone else.  In a national election, it's far less likely for your vote to make a difference than for Browne to win. After all, not only would you have to swing the vote in your state, but the electors for your state would have to comprise the margin of victory. This is, in fact, a pretty good argument for the pointlessness of voting at all, but there are other reasons for voting that, in my opinion, make it worthwhile.

It assumes that Browne's supporters all vote in a block. .  This is related to the last point. You control your own vote. You may be able to wield some influence over other voters, but the more support Browne has, the more effect he's likely to have on the election, and the less significant your vote is in affecting Browne's influence. And further, the more support Browne has, the more likely he is to win, rendering this whole issue more silly than it already is.

It assumes that a vote is valuable only if cast for a winner. .  What is the value of a losing vote? In part, it depends on how much you enjoy voting. But it also depends on how much support the candidate receives, and how readily this support can be translated into future party growth or influence over other parties or organizations. A candidate who carries the margin of victory in an election will carry a certain amount of clout with other parties, since to win those voters, the parties must try to accommodate those voters' views, or at least pretend to. All of which means that Browne, if he doesn't win, is likely to have the most positive influence if he does exactly what proponents of this argument fear -- if he swings the election.  The impact of a vote can extend beyond a given election. Ross Perot received 19% of the popular vote in 1992. He came in third. He didn't carry a single state. Yet his campaign has had a significant impact on American politics. Far from wasting their votes, his supporters made the federal budget deficit a major issue, at least for a while. Whatever else you might say about Perot, that's a noteworthy achievement. What did the Bush and Clinton supporters achieve?  But what do accomplish by voting for the winner? He would have won anyway, and he doesn't get any bonus points for adding your vote to the pile. A losing candidate can benefit from a higher vote total -- through increased ballot access, a stronger constituency, and greater influence -- but a winning candidate gets nothing more at all.  It's also worth considering what it means to "win". The candidate you vote for may win the election, but if that candidate doesn't represent your views, or at least move things in the direction you want, what have you really won?

It assumes that Bush cares what you think. .  If a candidate knows that he always has your vote, his strongest incentive is to ignore you. In 1996, Bob Dole went back on his pledge to repeal the 1994 rifle ban because he knew that gun owners were not going to vote for Bill Clinton, and Clinton signed the Republican welfare reform bill because he knew that opponents of the bill were not about to vote for Dole. And both of them knew that most people were afraid of wasting their votes and would support them no matter what they did. (For example, we had the truly pathetic spectacle of Silicon Valley CEOs clamoring to pledge their support for Clinton and Dole, even though both candidates supported censorship of the Internet.) Consequently, neither candidate is going to waste his time courting votes that he already has; each is going to move away from his strongest supporters to court votes that might otherwise go to the other candidate.

It assumes that Gore voters can't change their minds and are not responsible for their actions. .  If Browne voters are responsible for putting Gore in office, then what are Gore voters responsible for? The people responsible for putting Al Gore in office are the people who vote for Al Gore, not the people who vote for Harry Browne or Pat Buchanan, or who stay home. Further, Gore voters are not necessarily any more enthusiastic about Gore than Bush voters are about Bush, and in fact many of them might be willing to vote for Ralph Nader or Harry Browne if people didn't go to such lengths to convince them not to.

It applies just as well in reverse. .  If you vote for Bush instead of Browne because you think that Browne "can't win", then Bush is pulling a vote from Browne. If it's true that Browne's votes could put Bush over the top, it's just as true that Bush's votes could put Browne over the top. Why do we blame the Browne voters for splitting the vote, but not the Bush voters?  .  (Incidentally, this proves that Browne can win.)

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. .  The more people who refrain from voting for Browne because he "can't win", the more likely it becomes that he can't, and this is the only reason he can't. Naturally, there are fringe candidates who truly can't win, not because they're minor party candidates, but because they're nuts. Such candidates are irrelevant. If a candidate, such as Harry Browne, is influential enough to raise this issue, he's influential enough to stand a chance of winning. You can't have it both ways -- either a candidate is part of the lunatic fringe and not worth worrying about, or he's mainstream enough to make a difference.

Ultimately, it's pointless to try to affect the outcome of an election by playing a bad candidate against a worse one. Your vote simply doesn't have that kind of effect. Even if it did, you would still end up with someone you didn't want.

Voting is a way of conveying information. A vote for a candidate announces that you prefer that candidate and support his positions. If you vote for one candidate merely to keep another one out of office, you're doing just as much for that candidate as his most enthusiastic supporter. A vote is a vote. By associating yourself with a lesser-of-two-evils, your vote gets lost in the noise. How can anyone possibly know what you want? Even if the candidates wanted to accomodate you, there's nothing in your vote that makes your views clear. Bush would have to figure out how many of his votes came from would-be Libertarians supporting free trade, and how many from would-be Buchanan supporters who support protectionist trade legislation. And then what would he do?

If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you ensure that what you consider evil will continue to win. It's easy to become desperate, to think that the best strategy is to get rid of the worse evil before trying to make things better. But by supporting a particular type of candidate, you create an incentive for similar candidates. If the major parties are successful doing what they've been doing, why on earth would they change? They have a winning strategy. There are always plenty more candidates waiting in line who are just as bad as the one you worked so hard to get rid of. And millions of other people are voting for the candidate you oppose because they consider him to be the lesser of two evils. And it's exactly the same in every election. Even when you succeed, things continue to get worse. And you don't always succeed.

If you want something, you have to let people know it. This is really the only reason to vote: to express what you believe. Voting against a candidate is not a belief, it's the lack of a belief. You can tell people what you don't want by simply staying home. It's rare enough to find a candidate you can honestly support. When you do, vote for him. Even if he doesn't win, you will have helped create a common bond -- and a constituency -- among people who aren't satisfied with the quadrennial Nuremberg rallies of the major parties. At the very least, you'll know that other people are on your side, and you may be taking the first steps toward real reform.

Seems to me that's worth it.

Michael Wells
September, 2000
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